Novogradac’s OZ Working Group and Conference, with John Sciarretti

John Sciarretti

What Opportunity Zones regulatory issues does the Novogradac Working Group address in their recent comment letter to the IRS? And what can you expect at the upcoming Novogradac OZ conference?

John Sciarretti is a partner at Novogradac, a top 50 accounting firm and national thought leader in the Opportunity Zone industry.

Click the play button below to listen to my conversation with John.

Episode Highlights

  • The objectives of the Novogradac Opportunity Zone Working Group, and how to join.
  • How Novogradac has risen to prominence as a national expert in real estate tax credits, influencing the rulemaking process with respect to NMTC and Opportunity Zones.
  • The state of Opportunity Zones, and John’s estimation of how much capital has flowed into Qualified Opportunity Funds so far.
  • The Novogradac Working Group’s comment letter on IRS final regulations.
  • How the upcoming Novogradac OZ conference presents the first opportunity to meet with marketplace participants since the final regs have been issued.

Featured on This Episode

Industry Spotlight: Novogradac

Novogradac

Based in San Francisco, Novogradac is a top 50 national accounting firm with an emphasis in the real estate sector, specializing in tax credits. Novogradac will host their 2020 Opportunity Zones Spring Conference in Long Beach, CA, April 22-24.

Learn more about Novogradac’s OZ Conference:

About the Opportunity Zones Podcast

Hosted by OpportunityDb.com founder Jimmy Atkinson, the Opportunity Zones Podcast features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in opportunity zones.

Show Transcript

Jimmy: Welcome to the Opportunity Zones Podcast. I’m your host, Jimmy Atkinson, and today I’m joined by John Sciarretti. John is a partner at Novogradac & Company, a top 50 national accounting firm. John is also the leader of the Novogradac Working Group, a membership organization for Opportunity Zones industry professionals.

And this April, Novogradac is hosting their 2020 Spring OZ Conference in Long Beach, California. John joins us from his office in Dover, Ohio. John, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today and welcome to the podcast.

John: Thanks, Jimmy. I’m very excited to be here.

Jimmy: Excited to be here with you as well, John. I had Mike Novogradac on the podcast a couple months ago and excited to get your point of view on Opportunity Zones and the conference coming up here. So let’s dive in. John Novogradac, as many of our listeners probably know, that firm is really on the cutting edge of Opportunity Zones and has really been one of the educational leaders in the space from the get-go. Can you provide a little bit more background on the firm and on yourself?

John: Sure. I’ll start with myself. So I’ve been at CPA most of my career, about 30 years, the best years of which have been with Novogradac, 18 of those years. Novogradac’s actually been around for 30 years and it’s based in San Francisco. We have approximately 25 offices and 800 employees. Our clients represent a broad range of industries. We have a major emphasis on the real estate sector though and also on tax incentives. So these include the low-income housing tax credit, the storage tax credit, the renewable energy tax credit, the new market tax credit, and then Opportunity Zones. So that’s our focus. We obviously get involved in other accounting and tax issues away from those, but those incentives are our main focus.

Historically, we’ve been on the leading edge of all these incentives. I’ll give you an example, the new market tax credit, we were involved from the very beginning. In that space, we also sponsored technical working group and it included industry stakeholders, which were involved in that space. And the rulemaking process, we were very involved in. We actually influenced that rulemaking process. And then we actually literally wrote the book on New Market Tax Credits. We have a handbook that we publish. Likewise, with all these other programs that I mentioned, we’re always recognized as a national expert.

We work with all the players in the industry. We work with investors, we work with opportunity funds, we work with developers, and different community groups, nonprofits, and primarily on the frontend to help structure these incentive-based financings. We do a lot of transaction, structuring transaction accounting, and then we also provide the normal tax and audit and compliance services around these transactions. So that’s Novogradac.

With respect to the Opportunity Zone, because of our involvement in these other community development finance incentives, one of the cosponsors actually approached us and asked us our input on this initial bill during 2015. And we began to track this bill at that time in 2015. And at that time, we also, consistent with the New Markets Tax Credits, we assembled a small, technical working group of likely participants that…just to gather and discuss how best we could use this incentive.

And we were also very fortunate at that time to have the opportunity to interact with the Economic Innovation Group who’s really the impetus and the architect of Opportunity Zones. And so it was very fortunate that we were able to interact with them. We played a technical role, gave some technical advice around the incentive, around the bill. And then to our surprise, it actually passed in 2017.

So since then, our technical working group has grown to 125 members, member organizations. And like the new market group, you know, it runs the gamut of the industry. We have prestigious law firms that are part of this working group. Notable community development, nonprofits, financial institutions, of course, developers, business owners, and then multi-asset funds make up this Opportunity Zones group.

Jimmy: That’s great, John. Thank you. And you mentioned that you literally wrote the book on New Markets Tax Credits. I believe you literally wrote the book or at least a book, a handbook on Opportunity Zones as well as. Is that right?

John: That’s correct. And that’s actually undergoing a revision to incorporate the final regs as we speak.

Jimmy: Right. Yeah, those final regs just hitting about a couple months ago now. So that’s really interesting to hear that you guys were involved with this incentive so early on back in 2015 when it was still being written essentially and then just a couple years later, it was passed at the end of 2017. And now here we are today, little more than two years later, beginning of 2020. And you guys are definitely on the leading edge of Opportunity Zones as we’ve mentioned. So you talked about the working group a little bit already. Can you give us a little bit more background on it and who can join it and how they can go about joining if they want to?

John: Sure. Anybody can join it. There’s a fee to join. An annual fee. We gather once a month or actually at a minimum once a month we have a conference call. Primarily our objective is to foster like effective collaboration around this program, best practices for using the incentive, how to implement the incentive. This includes, of course, influencing the rulemaking process. And so we are very instrumental, very active during the rulemaking process. We actually provided four comment letters during that process to the Treasury, once before the initial transfer regs and then commented on both sets of proposed regs and then also recently commented on the final regs.

We also had some supplemental letters around affordable housing and how the incentive to be enhanced to help affordable housing and Opportunity Zones. And so we’ve been quite active on the rulemaking front. The IRS has been very, very responsive to our comments. In fact, they’ve considered most of our recommended solutions. I’d say almost all of our recommended solutions. There’s been very few of them that didn’t make it in the implemented final regs. As far as who can join the working group, you know, anyone can join the working group that feels like they would benefit from the conversations around how best to use the incentive.

Jimmy: No, that’s great. And yeah, obviously, your firm has been instrumental in some of the rulemaking process with the IRS. You’ve submitted many comment letters, as you mentioned, and I’m going to ask you about your comment letter on the final regs and what you think still needs to get buttoned up in a few minutes here. But first, I want to back up for a minute, John, and see if I could just get your 30,000-foot view of Opportunity Zones. What, overall, is the state of Opportunity Zones at this moment now from your point of view?

John: Well, I mean, it definitely appears to be on the right track. I don’t know if you know this. You probably know this. We actually track fundraising or a subset of multi-asset funds in the marketplace…

Jimmy: Yes, Mike and I discussed that at length during his podcast episode with me a couple months ago. It’s fascinating what you’re doing there in that space and the data you’re collecting. So yeah, please continue.

John: Yeah. So the latest data from 350 funds against the subset is $8.5 billion of capital raise. So because this is just a subset, I mean, we were looking at only multi-asset funds, only those multi-asset funds that respond to us. And then, you know, we get some public data as well in the marketplace for some of the public funds. So we really think that this number is obviously low. Maybe it’s double that, which would be about $17 billion. And then, you know, it’s probably around $20 billion when you take into consideration all the self-funded type stuff, which really tracks pretty well with the government estimates to this point, the $20 billion number. So we think fundraising is on track.

Personally, I think the real power of this incentive is the focus it’s created on these struggling communities that got very little attention before this incentive and now they’re all the buzz, right? Everybody is focusing on them. And so having this focus and all the stakeholders that come together, just to try to discover ways to bring public and private in philanthropic capital to these zones I think is the real power of this incentive. Then, you know, the actual incentive itself as a tool. You hear people talk about it being a tool. And it helps maybe get over the hump. But I think it’s really helped to just create this focus of, hey, these are the areas that really need support in the incentive. And so I think that’s the real power. I think it’s also, it’s just getting started.

I don’t know what the government estimate…how far along they figured we were going to be in the rule process, but really, two years is pretty quick. But we just got the final rules. And so I think it’s really poised to explode now that folks are a little more comfortable with how to operate in this space. I also think it’s a bit politicized, I believe, anyway. But I think that’s normal for someone that’s been around the New Market Tax Credit Program. Early on in that program, there was a lot of bad press on some of the projects that were funded. But like all good policy, it withstands these political challenges. And I think we’re coming up on 20 years now for New Market Tax Credits. And so, hopefully, the same as the power of this incentive and the benefits start to accumulate, some of the bad press will die down or at least not be paid attention to as much.

So that’s where I think we are. I think we need reporting, right? We need transparency. And was it Peter Drucker said that, “You can’t manage anything you don’t measure?” And I think we ought to be measuring this stuff so we can improve it down the road so we understand the effect of it. You just have the data and it also keeps people honest. Right? I mean, when people are reporting, they tend to be more honest and consistent with the policy of what this incentive is all about. And so I do definitely think we need some reporting around Opportunity Zones.

Jimmy: Yeah, I agree with you there. I think pretty much everybody agrees that we need some sort of reporting. To what extent we need it and what level of reporting we need and who is responsible for collecting it, and those are some of the nuances that need to get ironed out. But yeah, and I hope you’re right that the negative press starts to melt away here as this program becomes more and more popular.

So just to get back to your point at the beginning there about the Treasury estimates or the government estimates, I believe the Treasury has estimated that this incentive program is going to bring about $100 dollars of capital investment into these opportunity zones. And so if you’re saying we may be at about $20 billion right now then that is pretty much right on pace, especially considering the fact that it’s pretty early on in the program still. What, we have another seven years essentially to invest dollars into the incentive, if I’m not mistaken, right?

John: It’s correct. Of course, you’re probably going to get more early. All though I don’t know. I mean, obviously, things are clear now. So folks lost a 5% benefit. Maybe wait for it to be a little more clear. I don’t think it’s that significant, that 5% benefit. More significance in the deferral, the remaining deferral and sort of the backend benefit.

Jimmy: That’s true, yes. And it’s hard to predict the future. We’re not sure if these trends will continue, or maybe more money will come in over the later years or less. And in some part, it depends on market conditions as well, which are obviously very difficult to predict. Well, John, I want to talk to you about some of the comment letters that you’ve made. You mentioned them earlier that they’ve been mostly successful, that the IRS has adopted most of the comments that you submitted over the last couple of years. And the final regulations came out at the end of last year, December 2019, and there’s a few sticking points even with those final regs. And I know you have submitted a comment letter on those final regulations. Can you recap some of the higher-level points in that letter and what you’d like further clarification on still from IRS?

John: You know, as I mentioned earlier, IRS and Treasury did a super job, and listening to all the stakeholders that commented and implemented the recommendations in these final regulations. But I think we, as a group, think there’s still a handful of issues that really, most of which emerged in these final regulations, and a lot of it in the discussion in the preamble, not in the actual regulatory text itself.

So we felt it would be good to draft a letter commenting on these final regulations. And we felt that the issues that we were talking about could be addressed either through technical corrections to these final regulations, which are yet to be done, or some form of supplemented guidance, maybe even like an FAQ that provides clarity to taxpayers. And the FAQ, I don’t know if you’ve been on the government’s IRS site, but there’s a number of FAQs that clear up some of the questions around certain provisions of the statutes. And so we thought that might be an avenue for them to address some of these issues as well.

A couple of the issues that were in the letter, I’ll just mention a couple of them that we talked about. One of them was an issue where we asked the question to what extent, if any, an investor can sell property to either a qualified Opportunity Fund or a qualified Opportunity Zone business, and then contribute cash equal to that gain on the sale? And so you’re selling into a business or a fund as a taxpayer or an investor. You receive a gain and you contribute that gain, that eligible gain and then the QOF or the QOZB, and treat that as a purchase. So is that a good transaction where you reinvest the gain that you got from selling to the fund that you’re going to be a member of or a partner of or an investor in?

And so there was some discussion in the preamble where Treasury actually warned that if this type of transaction that I just discussed were successfully challenged under the step transaction doctrine and the gain wouldn’t be eligible and the purchase wouldn’t be a purchase consistent with the rules under qualified Opportunity Zone property. And when they say if it were successfully challenged under the step transaction doctrine without getting all the technical detail, what it really means is that there’s no economic significance in a transaction. And so, in other words, it was just if the transaction was purely for tax reasons and not economic reasons, and so they’re basically ignored in tax law.

And so what the government is doing is they’re warning taxpayers that if you have a similar transaction that is successfully challenged under this debt transactions doctrine, then it’s not going to count, that gain is not going to be eligible. And they don’t even go as far as saying that later investment made the taxpayer a related party. So if you kind of follow these rules, you can’t sell to a related party, and you can’t even sell to the party that you’re going to become related to. That’s pretty clear in the regs. And we’re good with that. We think that makes sense under the step transaction doctrine.

Jimmy: It’s essentially just circular cash flow. Is that right?

John: Circular cash flow, right. But there’s a lot of confusion about this. And so folks are observing this as an absolute standard, where no property sales can occur between the taxpayer and the fund or the taxpayer in the business and then followed by this investment. So, in other words, you can never reinvestigate. We don’t think that that’s the case. We think that there are certain transactions that do not fit inside this step transaction doctrine. And so we just asked Treasury to clarify that to make sure that they make that clear and confirm that it’s not an absolute standard where no gain can be reinvested. So I think that would be helpful to taxpayers who were planning on selling their land to a fund, realizing the gain and reinvest in it.

They weren’t planning on being greater than 20% shareholder or partner of that fund, therefore not related, but they do want to be a part of it. And so, we think there are certain transactions given the facts and circumstances that would fit and not be determined ineligible, consistent with the step transactions doctrine. That’s one of the big issues.

Another issue that we had is the case where additions made to nonqualified tangible property, whether that would satisfy the original use requirement. Let me give you an example. If you had a piece of property that wasn’t qualified either because you bought it from a related party or a business bought it from a related party, or maybe it was purchased by that business prior to 2017, that’s a nonqualified asset.

And so folks felt that even if you have this nonqualified building, that you can make additions to that building that satisfies as original purchase and as long as you made enough of them, right, and as long as your good property end up being 70% or greater in relation to all your property, then it would be okay. And even though you had this sort of nonqualified assets. Say you bought the building prior to…without thinking about the vacancy rules, in other words, the building was not taken and you bought it prior to 2017, it wouldn’t be qualified, but you’re saying, “Hey, I’m going to put…let’s say I bought the building for $200,000. I’m going to put $800,000 in improvements on it then I should be okay because 80% of my property is good.”

And that’s really the rule for lease property. You can lease property regardless of, sort of, if it was original use or not. And the actual lease improvements, leasehold improvements that the fund might make or the business might make, it’s looked at as separate qualified property, originally use of property. And so we felt, you know, that we feel like additions to property that you own should be treated similar to additions to property that you lease, but there was a discussion in the preamble where the government provided that these additions to nonqualified property do not satisfy this original use requirement. And we don’t really feel that there was any… we feel like they should because there’s really no tax reason they shouldn’t and there’s no policy reason they shouldn’t.

You’re investing in the community, but they provided a reason and their reason was that it creates an additional administrative burden on taxpayers and the IRS. And so knowing that you have to track this anyway, this additional basis has its own separate life and the life from a depreciation perspective. You know, we don’t think that’s reasonable. And so we went back to them to just kind of ask again whether they can confirm that these would be good, this would be good property consistent with the leasehold improvements. And it’s really, there’s a lot of folks that were planning on adding to nonqualified property and it being qualified.

So before this rule, they felt they were okay. And now it’s kind of created a little hiccup, but hopefully, it’ll get solved in the technical corrections or through some further guidance. We did kind of hear informally, which was nice that, “Hey, as long as you can track the basis, it should be okay.” But that was good but it was kind of an informal comment.

Jimmy: Right. It’d be nice to get that in writing, right?

John: Yeah. So those are a couple of the main things in there. There were some other stuff in there but I believe it’s in the public forum now so you can…folks can read it.

Jimmy: I’ll be sure to link to it in the show notes for today’s episode at opportunitydb.com/podcast. John, so the points that you brought up in the comment letter on the final regs aside, what have been some of the other big Opportunity Zone challenges that you and your clients have faced so far?

John: I mean, I think a lot of the challenges were from the lack of clarity on some of these provisions. And now that we have final regs and a whole lot more clarity, I think it solves most of the issues that folks have had from a technical perspective other than these handful of items that we’re dealing with in our final letter. I think from an industry perspective, I think community development finance tends to get a lot of institutional investment in folks that are traditionally in this space are used to that institutional investment, meaning the bank’s buy in the credits and the like. This world’s a whole different class of investor. There’s a whole different way of finding those investors and raising capital, both from a legal perspective and just an avenue of how to find them.

And so I think it’s been frustrating for some of the traditional community development finance folks that aren’t used to raising equity from individuals. But there’s a whole host of other characters that are…other industries and organizations that do that for a living. So it’s not a bad thing. It’s good to have this other class of investment in these communities side by side with some of the institutional investment for credits and the like. And so it may be a challenge for some, but I think it’ll work its way out where they work together at some point as we move down this path in the Opportunity Zone world.

Jimmy: Right. That’s definitely a different class investor. Probably has forced a lot of community development financial folks, as you mentioned, to kind of think outside the box in terms of getting in front of investors with capital gains who have patient capital as well and can kind of absorb the nuances of the Opportunity Zone incentive. It’s a little bit of a different beast and obviously it’s a new investment vehicle as well which brings its own challenges, of course.

So John, before we go today, I want to spend some time talking with you about the conferences that you’ve put on at Novogradac. Novogradac has had three Opportunity Zone conferences already, national conferences that have taken place in New Orleans, and Denver, and Chicago over the past year and a half or so. Can you recap those conferences briefly? What have been some of the big takeaways from those past conferences? And then I want to ask you about the upcoming conference coming to Long Beach in April in another minute or two here.

John: Sure. So I think we might have put on the first, at least large Opportunity Zone conference back in 2018. I think we were the first one out of the gate. And it was overwhelming, the response we had. We were 1,100 people that showed up. We ran out of room and had to video some of it on-site and that was a fantastic conference. So I think we’re the pioneer when it comes to the conferences and then it’s leveled out a bit when we went to Denver in the spring of 2019 and Chicago in the fall. There were a lot. There was a lot of competition, conferences if you want to call it competition. I mean, everybody is just trying to get the word out, right? But it seems like it’s died down. There aren’t as many conferences and I think that the ones that stuck around are the ones that were the good ones. And so I think that’s a testament to what we’ve provided in those conferences.

We’ve gotten great feedback. We always had great talent from the marketplace with real marketplace experience on panels. Educate all the attendees on how best to use this incentive. We did a great job of keeping attendees abreast of what’s going on in the marketplace and what we can expect. And that’s how they can get out in front of any opportunities or issues that are coming down the pipe. And then we’ve always made sure we had plenty of network opportunities. So I think folks have enjoyed our conferences from that perspective.

Jimmy: Right. Yeah, there were definitely a lot of conferences in 2019. I think you’re probably right. I think you were probably the first major conference in 2018. You kind of got ahead of it before a lot of other conference organizers could react. You guys were obviously in front of this program years before that even. But, yeah, the conference circuit has definitely died down here toward the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020.

John: A lot of it is that folks, like anything new, right, they’re trying to see how they fit in. And a lot of them just realized they don’t. They don’t fit. Or certain part of the marketplace that doesn’t fit well and so they quit having conferences or what have you, but I think it’s natural that it’s slowed down, the circuit has slowed down.

Jimmy: So, John, talk to us now about your upcoming Spring Opportunity Zone Conference coming up next month, April 23 and 24 in Long Beach, California. Tell us a little bit about what you have planned for that.

John: Sure. So we have a preconference scheduled for the 22nd actually. In our preconference, we give a couple workshops. One is the 101, the basic workshop where you learn the basic fundamentals on how this incentive works and how you implement it. But then there’s also a 201 which is new this year. Overcoming Obstacles is what it’s titled. And that’s really dealing with more of the complicated technical issues and how to structure transactions around any sort of issues within the guardrails of the program. So those are the preconference workshops. The basics is actually 9:00 to 4:00. So that’s a long day. And then the Overcoming Obstacles is a 9:00 to 12:00. And so that’s the preconference workshop. And then we plan on having a welcome reception for networking that evening at 5:30. And so that’ll be great. That’ll be something new that we’re trying this year to get folks together on the first day of the conference.

And then, as you said, the April 23rd and 24th, we have our main conference. The objective of this conference, I’d say we’re coming up on the two-year anniversary of the Zone designations, we now have final regulations which we talked about. So it’s really, it may be the first time we have enough experience and enough clarity to really assess whether this Opportunity Zone incentive is at least beginning to live up to what the expectations were around it. So I think it’s a great opportunity, no pun intended, to really access the marketplace. Well, I don’t know that we had that opportunity before because there was a little confusion around how to implement things. And this wasn’t enough time to really start funding in a meaningful way. So that’s our objective.

And to really carry that out, we have some great panel topics and we’ve invited a great cast of characters. We start out on the first day, we have our Washington Wire, where we’re going to talk about what’s happening from the legislative landscape in Opportunity Zones. And we have some great panelists from that. Mike is go

nna moderate Novogradac, Alfonso Costa, the Deputy Chief of Staff from HUD, part of that panel, Shay Hawkins who is the CEO of Opportunity Funds Association. And then Chris Slevin from EIG is going to be on that panel. So that’ll be a great panel to kind of see what’s happening on the legislative front. And then we’re going to move on into a panel which I’m moderating, which we’ve titled “State of the Opportunity Zone Marketplace.”

So we’re trying to get a good cross-section of folks on that panel, where we can really share our lessons learned over the past two years and assess, again, whether the incentives’ living up to expectations and then, you know, see what sort of their predictions are, what the future holds for Opportunity Zones. We got some great panelists, including Martin Muoto, who’s the founder and managing partner of SoLa Impact, which has raised a lot of money, funded a lot of great projects. One of the leading funds in the Opportunity Zone space.

And then Jonathan Tower from Arctaris is going to join us on that panel, who actually is focused on the operating business space. So that’s something that’s starting to take hold and progress as we have more clarity around these final regulations. So that’s the sort of plenaries, the sessions in the morning.

And then we’re going to have a couple tracks. We’re gonna have a fund track and we’re gonna have a business track. And so we’ll run together in those funds. We’re going to talk about how to build your deal flow pipeline, how to structure multi-asset funds, strategies for accessing investor capital. So those are sort of the fund track. And then on the business track, we’re going to talk about investing and operating businesses, investing in real estate, and combining the OZ incentives with other incentives. So those are the couple of tracks we’re going to have in the afternoon on Thursday.

And then on Thursday night, we have a networking reception, and so that’s a good time for folks to meet and greet, do deals together. And then Friday, we start out with implementing the final rules. We’ve invited some of IRS chief council members. And so we’ll hopefully have a representative from the IRS on that panel to maybe clear up some of the gaps that we have and understanding some of these final rules. So we’re going to go through implementing these final rules on that panel. And then we’re going to have a panel around OZ Community Catalyst, where folks can hear how to create community strategies, provide momentum for their OZ investments. And we’re going to feature some of the Forbes 20 on that panel. So that’ll be an exciting panel on Friday.

And then we’re going to finalize with measuring social and community impact, which we’ve talked about today, which is really needed. And we’re going to hear on that panel how to implement measuring and what makes sense from a policy perspective. We got some great folks on that panel, including EIG and Catalyst. We’ve invited a few impact funds as well that are already doing measurement in collecting data and so they can give us their experience on how that works in the marketplace. And then the conference ends. So that’s a full lineup for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Jimmy.

Jimmy: Well, that’s terrific, John. A lot of really great speakers, panelists that are really pioneers in the Opportunity Zone space. So I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be out there as well conducting a few podcast interviews that listeners of this podcast will get to listen to in the weeks that follow the conference. I’m going to be interviewing some of the attendees and speakers there. So a lot of good discussions will be had there for listeners of this podcast to keep in mind. And…

John: And one thing I forgot, Jimmy, to mention is on Wednesday’s conference, we’re actually going to have a working group meeting for the members that get there in time for that meeting. And that’s at 4:00 Pacific Time. And so if any folks are interested in the working group, they’re welcome to come to our meeting at 4:00. We just ask that you send us a note that you’re interested in coming so that we can make sure we have room for everyone.

Jimmy: Perfect. Yeah, that’s great to know. Great to extend that invitation there and I’ll be sure to link to your contact information in the show notes page for this episode as well. Yeah, John, I’m really looking forward to it. Before we go though, can you tell our listeners where they can go to learn more about you and Novogradac and then where they can go to register for the conference?

John: Sure. You can go to our website. It’s www.novoco.com. And on that website is an event’s portal. You can find the Novogradac 2020 Opportunity Zones Conference. Will give you all the details of the conference, the speakers, the agenda, the times, and anything that you would need.

Jimmy: All right, John, that’s great. So they can head over to novco.com. And even better for our “Opportunity Zones Podcast” listeners, I’ve obtained a promo code for 10% off registrations from Novogradac for the conference. You can use promo code NovoOppDb. And that’ll get you 10% savings off of conference registration. So check it out at novoco.com.

And also for my listeners out there, I’ll have show notes on the Opportunity Zones database website for today’s episode. You can find those show notes at opportunitydb.com/podcast. And there you’ll find links to all of the resources that John and I discussed on today’s show. I’ll make sure to link to the comment letter that Novogradac submitted to IRS on final regs. I’ll also have a link to the conference agenda and the conference website and the link to where you can register for the conference. And I’ll include the promo code in there as well so you can just copy-paste it if you need to.

Alright John, thanks again for joining me today. This has been terrific.

John: My pleasure.

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